RETURN OF THE TYRANT (EP, 2010)

Released in September 2010 in Australia by Dominus Records as a limited edition run (now out of stock), available worldwide via paid Digital Download.

In 2004, Dungeon released the album One Step Beyond which contained the pirate themed epic “Tarranno Del Mar”. That song went on to become a live favourite that LORD still continues to play now. The idea was to always revisit the tale but the idea was sidelined after Dungeon disbanded so the focus could be put onto LORD being rebuilt as the “new” Dungeon. Finally the idea has seen the light of day: a ten minute long song, fully orchestrated, dozens of guitar tracks, literally hundreds of vocal tracks and the tale continues.

Aside from the title track, this EP contains covers of the classic Symphony X song “Of Sins And Shadows”, massive 80s hit “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew, featuring Andy on lead vocals, and six unplugged versions of Dungeon and LORD songs, plus two different bonus remixes of the title track. All up, this EP is actually longer than most albums!

Lyrics and Liner Notes

(All liner notes by LT. Lyrics reprinted by kind permission.)

Return Of The Tyrant

Lyrics / Music: T. Grose

There was a ship.
Cursed, with black sails and crewed by the damned… or so the legend says.
Scores of souls were lost, sent down below to Davey Jones.
Then one day, it vanished… as if the ship was swallowed up by the sea itself.

It’s said that on moonless nights the cursed ship returns to torment the waves,
with its crew of the damned and its captain with a heart of pure black.
Every sailor knows the legend and the name: Tarranno Del Mar… Tyrant Of The Sea.

Sailing through the gates of hell
Ten score years in wait, it served him well
Cast in shackles, a madman betrayed
Fed the anger that’s burning inside of him
Broken chains, now he takes to the waves again
The tyrant’s rage

Talons reach toward the sky
Pitch the banner black and raise it high
Cut-throat, insane, lost souls of the damned
Cursed eternal, the captain and crew with him
Rule the seas, the legend revived again
The tyrant’s reign

Nowhere to run
Nowhere to turn
When the time has now come
The tyrant will rise again

SOLO: LT / MARK / LT / MARK

The seeds of death for all are sown
Dragged below the waves to Davey Jones
Torn asunder and plundered their gold
Shown no mercy, the Tyrant dispatches them
Trim the sails, new conquests await the rage
Of the Tyrant’s blade

REPEAT CHORUS

Of Sins And Shadows

(LYRICS UNAVAILABLE DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS)

We have a huge list of covers that we want to either play live or record, ranging from Bon Jovi to Bathory and everything in between and beyond. One of Mark’s favourite bands is Symphony X, which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows him – he practically lives in a Symphony X shirt (we’re convinced he’ll be buried in one eventually). Great song but incredibly challenging and a great way to introduce Damo on his first recording with the band. The vocal especially was tricky since Russell Allen’s voice is so different to mine, so I kind of did my own thing with as many tips of the hat to Russel’s amazing performance as I could. Fantastic guest keyboard solo by our good friend Gabi too!

(I Just) Died In Your Arms

(LYRICS UNAVAILABLE DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS)

This cover was originally supposed to appear on the Japanese pressing of Set In Stone but when we did the demos for it, my voice just didn’t suit it at all – it was awful, in fact! The idea was shelved and we decided to do one of our other melodic rock choices, “Hard To Love” by Harem Scarem (which fit better anyway seeing that Pete Lesperance did a guest solo on the album). We’d always regretted that this song never happened so Andy put his hand up to have a go at the lead vocals… and did an amazing job! We tried to respect the original intent of the song by not changing it up too much, but added a more hard rock edge to it.

Against The Wind

Lyrics / Music: T. Grose

A bad place, a dark space
The lines that weather my face
I stand alone before the storm

Walk with me and you’ll see
The flame that burns within me
A fire so cold to keep us so warm

You see the darkness in my eyes
The seed of life inside me dies
A search for the truth, to find a reason why
A voice cries out in pain in the night…

CHORUS:
Riding the storm wind
And facing the demons inside
A thousand sins behind my eyes
A cry from the blackness
Alone with the darkness inside
Forever will I walk against the wind…

No rhyme and no reason
My world betrayed by treason
I stumble blind, what’s going on?

Can’t see the road that lies beyond
A need to feel where I belong
When everywhere I turn seems to guide me wrong
Running through the night for so long…

REPEAT CHORUS

SOLO: MARK / LT / MARK

REPEAT CHORUS

During our Set In Stone tour in 2009, our previous drummer Tim Yatras put his back out and it forced us to think on our feet while he sat out a couple of the shows. We decided to forge ahead anyway and do the shows as an unplugged trio. They went so well that it planted the seed that it would be a cool idea to record an uplugged set one day. We chose the songs that worked best from the live set and threw in a couple of others that we thought would work OK and we ended up with six songs to throw onto our EP. It really rams home that underneath the pyrotechnics, big production and massive amount of layers that we usually have in our productions, there’s a good song at the heart of it all.

Rain

Words: T. Grose Music: T. Grose / T. Yatras / A. Dowling

Darkness closes in
And I turn and face the storm
Midnight in the rain
Like a thousand times before

Oh… I feel the sorrow coming, world succumbing
Oh… I feel the sadness tear me away

CHORUS:
The rain keeps falling down on me
Of pain and life unwound to be
The rain keeps falling down on me
And darkness all around
As the rain falls down
Falls down on me…

A feeling of an empty life
Of broken heart, of broken dream
So tear the sonnet from my soul
Silent words unseen

REPEAT CHORUS

SOLO: LT / MARK / LT

REPEAT CHORUS

100 Reasons

Words / Music: T. Grose / T. Yatras

The future’s bright I tell you
Another perfect day
All our baggage packed we climb
Aboard this sinking ship
And so we sail…

Takes a second to say hello
And forever to say goodbye
Turn the cheek of a blind denial
Into another lie

PRE-CHORUS:
Oh, playing out this masquerade
Hold on to the dream
How long can we travel down this road we made?
Go on alone and leave me far behind

CHORUS:
I tell myself we’re all okay
(I can) think of a hundred different reasons
For me to make you stay
I leave you now and go my way
To find a change of season
To help me get my feet back on the ground

Inside it’s so frustrating
A heart wrapped in golden chain
Always searching for the rainbow
Always waiting in the rain

REPEAT PRE-CHORUS

REPEAT CHORUS

SOLO: LT

REPEAT PRE-CHORUS

REPEAT CHORUS OUT

Paradise

Words: D. Corney Music: D. Corney / T. Grose

I felt so weak, all hope was gone
My skin blistered slowly away
Gangrene and Smallpox – no life left inside of me
The pain that I felt was unreal…

PRE-CHORUS:
I make my last stand as success comes my way
My bones gain their strength, nothing stands in my way
The final encounter decides who will win
Desire to live will survive…

CHORUS:
Running away to paradise – victory in my sights
Running away to paradise – the gods are on my side

My body aching – scarred, torn and wretched
Forced to go on through the pain
Was it will that revived me, brought life back inside of me
With blood flowing fast though my veins…

New Horizons

Another city passes in the darkness
Another country come and gone
And on this never ending road I wander
Seems like I’m always on the run

CHORUS 1:
So long ago
I chose this lonely road
To follow new horizons
So far to roam
A million miles from home
So many more to go…

In another life I could have been the everyman
Another tale untold for me
Cursed by the gypsy’s kiss and driven onward
To reap the winds, forever free

CHORUS 2:
So long ago
I chose this lonely road
To follow new horizons
So far to roam
But one thing I know
One day I’ll find that road
That takes me home

Solo: LT / MARK

Another plane, another train
Another thousand miles of road
And one more day, I’ll find my way
Home to you…

Now I sit here waiting in the darkness
My thoughts a million miles away
Of all the things I’ve done, all the sights and wonder
Not one thing could make me stay (one more day)

REPEAT CHORUS 2

SOLO: MARK

Return Of The Tyrant (orchestral version)

Words/Music: T. Grose

One of the things that saddens me the most as a producer is knowing that a lot of the cool stuff that I hear as I’m mixing an album will never be heard by the fans. It’s a necessary evil of the mixing process that some elements must take priority over others, such as a lead vocal or a solo masking something that’s intended only to be a background instrument or effect. Sometimes those parts are really interesting in their own right but aren’t the intention of the song to be prominent. When I was scoring Return Of The Tyrant, I basically orchestrated all of it but due to it still being essentially a heavy metal song, I had to make sure the guitars were still the focus so the song would still actually be heavy, but that meant some of the ocherstra would be hidden, which was a shame since there was a lot of really cool stuff happening. I decided to do an orchestral mix of the song with the orchestra taking the forefront and some extra elements thrown in for good measure.

Return Of The Tyrant (radio edit)

Words/Music: T. Grose

So Return Of The Tyrant is nearly ten minutes long with a huge orchestrated intro and spoken word parts, and a huge sing-along outro. That’s fantastic but let’s face it, how many radio shows would dedicate that much airtime to a single band in their show? We decided that as a bonus we’d do a cut down version of the song for stations that would otherwise not play the song due to it’s huge length.